st place in the Japanese pantheon
was assigned to a goddess; that the throne was frequently occupied by
Empresses; that females were chiefs of tribes and led armies on
campaign; that jealous wives turned their backs upon faithless
husbands; that mothers chose names for their children and often had
complete charge of their upbringing--all these things go to show that
the self-effacing rank taken by Japanese women in later ages was a
radical departure from the original canon of society. It is not to be
inferred, however, that fidelity to the nuptial tie imposed any check
on extra-marital relations in the case of men: it had no such effect.

ENGRAVING: "IKEBANA" FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

ENGRAVING: ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF THE EMPEROR JIMMU IN UNEBI-YAMA

CHAPTER IX

THE PREHISTORIC SOVEREIGNS

JIMMU

IT is held by eminent Japanese historians that the Emperor Jimmu,
when he set out for Yamato, did not contemplate an armed campaign but
merely intended to change his capital from the extreme south to the
centre of the country. This theory is based on the words of the
address he made to his elder brothers and his sons when inviting them
to accompany him on the expedition "Why should we not proceed to
Yamato and make it the capital?"--and on the fact that, on arriving
in the Kibi district, namely, the region now divided into the three
provinces of Bizen, Bitchu, and Bingo, he made a stay of three years
for the purpose of amassing an army and provisioning it, the
perception that he would have to fight having been realized for the
first time. Subsequently he encountered strongest resistance at the
hands of Prince Nagasune, whose title of Hiko (Child of the Sun)
showed that he belonged to the Yamato race, and who exercised
military control under the authority of Nigihayahi, elder brother of
Jimmu's father. This Nigihayahi had been despatched from the
continental realm of the Yamato--wherever that may have been--at a
date prior to the despatch of his younger brother, Ninigi, for the
purpose of subjugating the "land of fair rice-ears and fertile reed
plains," but of the incidents of his expedition history takes no
notice: it merely shows him as ruling in Yamato at the time of
Jimmu's arrival there, and describes how Nigihayahi, having been
convinced by a comparison of weapons of war that Jimmu was of his own
lineage, surrendered the authority to him and caused, Prince Nagasune
to be put to death.

From a chronological point o